Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
What are your thoughts on Roundcube? https://roundcube.net
Pretty much every web hosting account has Roundcube built-in. You could always get a hosting account located in a country you like, and use the email built into it? Won't be the best...but it won't be the worst either  . |
Yep, Roudcube is all over the place, and I don't have a problem with it. I kind of like it. I think KolabNow uses a custom version of Roundcube on top of their server stack, and it works very well.
As for using typical hosting accounts along with Roundcube or other open source webmail app, that's a viable option for some folks, and something I did years ago. But it always ended up having too many issues for me. Lag, timeouts, quality of service, security concerns, deprecated versions, authentication issues, lack of 2FA, serious spam issues, lousy support that didn't know how to handle their own email services, and even IP blacklisting issues since a lot of spammers do this precise approach, which can then affect all neighboring IPs of legit people, etc...
I even went the dedicated server direction for a while and I've tried to roll my own, and then I had all sorts of extra security headaches. Properly running a solid, secure email server is not an easy task. In the end, I just decided to let the email experts who focused on email-only services take care of the full email service, top to bottom. They've fine-tuned their systems way better than whatever approach I could put together.
That was probably the time when I first discovered Tuffmail, which was -- at the time -- one of the the most amazing email services. The original owner sold the business, but is now back in charge as I understand it, and I would absolutely consider Tuffmail again if his servers were outside the US. But after Tuffmail, I figured I could never top what he did in the backend, so I never tried a hosting kind of approach again. Since then I've tried tons of services. But never back to the hosting approach.
But other folks might want to go for it. I'm not that adventuresome anymore, and to do it really well takes more time, effort, and maybe a little blood, sweat and tears. If I can find a non-5-eyes provider that I really like, I'll just stick with them.
And look, even the the OP -- @rnkn -- seems to have chosen to go back to Fastmail. And Fastmail is really good TBH, and I understand his decision. But for me, I want something that doesn't have two offices in two 5-eyes countries. That's about as as bad as you can get in terms of jurisdictions. And again, I don't intend to get rid of my Fastmail account entirely. I like the approach of spreading things around, and I want to move some stuff out of the US just on principle alone... and maybe eventually totally outside the US.
And I've already half-heartedly tried. For years, I've also been using Runbox, but the experience has been, well, underwhelming to me. Don't get me wrong, they are solid and the people running it are nice as can be. But the webmail is really important to me and the old Runbox webmail v6 is honestly terrible to me. Some people like it. I can't tolerate it. I was holding out hope that they would really deliver on their v7 beta webmail, but I've been watching the iceberg-like progress on it for years, and I also don't like it. I just spent a good testing session on it now, and it was painful to me in all different ways than v6. I think they just don't know how to make great webmail, at least for me. Others might love the beta. Nothing against Runbox people.
So I've been procrastinating for way too long and am finally trying to find a service that I like outside the 5+eyes. Who knows. I might just give up and stick with the ones I already have like the OP. But Tutanota, Mailbox.org, Posteo, and KolabNow seem to have some potential for me. More testing needed though.
And I didn't intend to take over this thread, apologies to the OP. I'm just feeling very verbose right now and writing way too much. When you're cooped up in a pandemic, these things can happen.
